• Apytele@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    They’re not right/left, they’re typically simple tube socks with the grips on the top and bottom so you can just slap them bitches on the patient any which way and have em work.

    This is more important in the regular hospital when it’s a grown man twice your size but half your strength d/t heart failure. Heart failure also means the legs themselves are inflated with so much fluid that your fingers leave prints like one of those stress balls full of clay (it’s called pitting edema!). We won’t discuss here what that much edema looks like when it makes its way up to the penis but you can put “scrotal / penile edema” into Google images if you really need a reason to watch your sodium intake.

    Since your patient can’t move his flaccid log-legs (including feet with 6-month long talons covered in skin flakes that blow around like snow), you’re going to have to haul them up onto your knee to be able to slide the sock on. It’s at this point you realize that you’ve gotten the wrong angle and his leg is sitting across your thigh such that his foot is poking out behind you but you’re not sure you have the strength to do it again and still be able to get the other one so you’re just gonna have to do some gymnastics twists to get both hands back there to git er done.

    Anyway that’s why the grips are on both sides, at least from someone whose job it is to apply them occasionally. Mostly though I do actually work psych where I can just hand them to people in exchange for their shoes that have laces. Lots of people say psych is easier but these are the same people who also look utterly flabbergasted when people respond to them shouting “CALM. DOWN.” by throwing hands.